BRAND STRATEGIST

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Business Insider

Business Insider Editor Lunch @ Mad Valley SF

March 21st 12-1pm

I had lunch with Henry Blodget, Editor and CEO of the Business Insider -one of the fastest growing business and tech news sites in the world. I crashed his presentation at Mad Valley SF, a place that describes itself as a cross between Madison Valley Avenue savvy and Silicon Valley dreams. Modern media is evolving at an unprecedented rate, the only way to embrace it is to adapt and Universal McCann refuses to stand stubborn and smell the burnt rubber of media's rapid acceleration and that's why Henry (and I) stopped in.

I crashed Henry's event to hear about the future of digital and to share some of his perspectives on mobile. The internet has disrupted many industries and it's beginning to happen to television. With consumer behavior changing, we turn on the t.v. to tell us a story yet now we're also on other devices while we're watching. Mobile has made digital 24/7 with consumers even using their smart phones for buying decisions while they're standing in the store. Google essentially owns mobile search and while it's compared to advertising at a store, Facebook is like advertising at a party with around 1/7th of the world's population now using FB. Mobile app revenue is growing as consumers are also doing things you could only do on your phone like Angry birds and Instagram -but still mobile is only a tiny fraction of ad spending. People are consuming a huge amount of content through mobile so you would think mobile advertising would be huge. Well, there's still some problems with it including the small screen and mobile CPMs being much lower, but if we can figure out a way to tap into it correctly there's definitely a big opportunity for mobile in the future... and that's how Henry sees it.

Surrounded by a semi-circle of computer screens where this presentation was taking place I met a couple guys from BLI. Britelite Immersive (BLI) is an experiential design agency and event production company that uses physical space to tell brand stories, leveraging technology as a medium and architecture as a canvas. They find creative solutions that break out of 2D environments to solve traditional marketing issues, connecting brands with audiences through sensory interaction. http://briteliteimmersive.com